Amy Allen

Amy Allen (born 1970) is an American liberal arts research professor of philosophy and women's, gender, and sexuality studies at The Pennsylvania State University, where she is also head of department. Previously, she was the Parents Distinguished Research Professor in the Humanities, and professor of philosophy and gender and women's studies, at Dartmouth College, and was chair of its department of philosophy from 2006 to 2012. Her research takes a critical approach to feminist approaches of power, and attempts to broaden traditional feminist understandings of power to apply to transnational issues. She spent 1996–1997 as a visiting assistant professor of philosophy at Grinnell College and 1997–1999 as a visiting assistant professor of philosophy at Dartmouth College, before accepting a permanent appointment there. The Politics of Our Selves: Power, Autonomy and Gender in Contemporary Critical Theory and The End of Progress: Critical Theory in Postcolonial Times. Allen's second book built on the foundations of her first, attempting to bridge the gap between Foucaultian and Habermasian critical theory. Her third attends to a critique of the oft-called fourth generation of the Frankfurt School Critical Theory, based on its continued usage of concepts such as progress and development. Allen challenges what she sees as eurocentrism in the work of theorists such as Axel Honneth, Rainer Forst and Jürgen Habermas and proposes a revision of the tenets of Critical Theory in light of Postcolonial Studies and Decolonial Thought.